The road crested a rise so high Adam caught a final teardrop of sunset gold amid the crown of trees. They descended with a tumbling river for company. A valley opened, wide enough to welcome both them and the river. Steep-sided hills brooded on all sides, bearing their cloaks of night like sentinels from an age of armor and warlocks, of seers and white-bearded kings. The sun was gone from this realm, yet the sky maintained its abundance of dusky hues. At the vale’s heart rose a village of stone that glowed in the final light. The dominion of Broadway began with a sign declaring its royal charter of 1134. The central road deserved the village’s name, for it was wide as a four-lane highway, yet paved in stone as ancient as the houses. At the village’s heart was a coaching inn, with a domed entrance where carriages drawn by six matched steeds had once passed. Planted at the roadside was a sign declaring in Gothic script that the inn was the oldest in all England.
Kayla spoke for the first time since leaving their rocky haven. “Let’s stay here.”
Kayla had not taken so much time dressing for a dinner in a long time.
Her bathroom was almost as large as her bedroom. A huge tub stood on four lion’s paws beneath a window she soon frosted with steam. She used all the hotel’s wide array of free gifts—herbal shampoo and bath salts and conditioner and lotion, all from the same shop that supplied Buckingham Palace. She dried her hair, combed it carefully, and held it away from her face with her mother’s jeweled clip. Kayla had decided not to take the jewelry pieces she had inherited from her mother to Africa, which was the only reason she still had them in her possession. Her watch, a graduation present from her father, and the one necklace she had in Dar es Salaam were gone now. In the weeks after Geoffrey vanished, Kayla had found these small thefts the hardest to bear. It felt as though he had stolen them intentionally to rub her nose in the dust. To break her just as hard as he possibly could.
And now there was Adam.
She sat in her slip before the little makeup table and oval mirror. The table was an old-fashioned affair, with a padded top and pink lace draped around the edges and a matching padded stool. The mercury-backed mirror rested in a gilded frame, with two miniature chandeliers dangling to either side. In the mirror Kayla could see a four-poster bed so high the hotel supplied an embroidered footstool to climb in and out. Across from the bed hung a portrait of a young woman, her face almost lost to candle soot.
She knew she would remember every little item about this room and this day for a very long time.
She lined up her makeup items like little chess pieces. She had not used any of them in months. The powder compact was cracked as the parched earth of Africa. The lipstick was almost gummy. The eyelash brush was rock-hard and left her dabbing gobs instead of evenly applying the ink. But she was able to achieve the un-made-up look she preferred. She finished with a trace of perfume behind each ear. She screwed the top back on the tiny bottle. One by one she placed the containers back in the little pouch. Then she lifted her gaze.
And stared straight into the truth.
Her father was right. Adam was a good man. He deserved far better and far more than the few fractured minutes she had to give.
Kayla rose from the stool. She picked up the dress on the bed. It was a midnight blue Feraud, high-collared and long-sleeved, fashioned of merino wool so fine it floated cloudlike over her head and clung invitingly to her form. She slipped into stockings and shoes to match. She drew out her mother’s pearls from her shoulder bag’s side pocket, and stepped back to the oval mirror.
Kayla fumbled with the clasp, then dropped her hands and said to her reflection, “You were a fool to come.”
Even in the off-season, the two single rooms cost more than Adam paid for a month at the Oxford boardinghouse. He mused over how little this bothered him as he showered. He had never spent money easily. In his youth, there had been none to spend. When older and earning, he had always been too focused on the goal of future freedom. Adam dressed in the suit he had purchased with company money. He had felt silly packing a suit and dress shirt and new tie. Yet now, as he took the carved wooden staircase down to the main gallery, he was doubly glad, both because all the men he saw were equally well dressed, and because Kayla would no doubt have come prepared.
The hotel’s main gallery was an odd juxtaposition of the antiquated and the polished. The flagstone floor still had grooves where metal-wheeled carts had brought in the packing chests used by guests arriving for the season. The front door was peaked and banded in iron, and each time one of the liveried servants opened it, Adam spotted another car from his dreams—a Bentley sports car, an Aston Martin, a vintage Rolls. The fireplace burned logs four feet long, casting a glow over the easy smiles and the dripping jewels. A giant Christmas tree draped in baubles and lights added to the festive atmosphere.
Then the glittering guests all turned in unison, the quick jerking motions of people whose attention has been drawn by the unexpected. And he knew. Even before he turned, he knew.
Kayla descended the staircase with careless ease. She wore a simple frock of understated elegance. It flowed about her, revealing both her feminine form and her strength. A string of pearls glowed softly in the firelight. A hairpin shaped like a tiny ruby butterfly looked ready to take flight. But it was not merely her beauty that captivated the guests. Kayla’s presence was like a panther among caged and sheltered pets. Her tanned features were almost feral in the firelight. A distilled quality of strength and hard-earned wisdom emanated from her, stronger and far more alluring than perfume.
Adam watched her cross the gallery toward him and knew he was lost.
Dinner was served in the baronial hall. The maître d’ bowed them through the double doors and led them beneath a ceiling forty feet high. All the tables cast glances their way. Every one.
When they were seated and the leather-bound menus were on the table before them, Adam said, “You’re like some incredibly exotic bird that’s just happened to land in the midst of all these English sparrows.”
“Sometimes I feel so utterly foreign here. I don’t know if it’s the result of my mother insisting I be educated in America, or if I was just born without the ability to fit in anywhere.”
“I know just exactly what you mean.”
“In America I was too English. In Africa I had to prove to every native that I wasn’t another overbearing Westerner, driven to travel by my own selfish agenda. And here I am baffled by these people. I watch the English, and it seems like they dance to music I never hear.” She began rearranging her cutlery. “And they lie so well, with such polish and oily courtesy.”
Adam reached across and took her hand. “He’s not here, Kayla. Not tonight.”
She stared at his hand. “I feel a little undone right now.”
“I’m glad you still feel comfortable enough to tell me that.”
“Perhaps too comfortable.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“This afternoon leaves me feeling like I’ve opened a door and I can’t get it shut again. No matter how much . . .” She looked at him with naked appeal. “So no more questions tonight, okay? Don’t ask me anything. Just for a little while.”
“Whatever you want. Tonight it’s your turn. Ask away.”
“You say that too easily. You make it seem so . . .”
He loved finishing that thought. “Natural?”
The waiters all wore white dinner jackets and seemed to skate beneath the tall ribbed ceiling. Kayla ordered wild salmon on saffron rice, he the Welsh lamb. Upon the walls brooded portraits of ermine-robed nobles. The paintings were flanked by royal standards. They were seated opposite a fireplace large enough to swallow their table. The room was scented by crackling cedar logs. Tall leaded windows rose by their table. The night-stained glass reflected a wash of candles.
He turned from the window to find Kayla watching him. He said, “Back in the valley where we stopped for lunch. You know how the sky looked after the sun disappeared behind the ridge? Photographers call that blue light, after the sun is gone but while the illumination is still strong enough to shoot without flash.”
“Your mother taught you that?”
“It was her favorite time of day. A pro knows to tighten the aperture right down. That’s where amateurs make their big mistake, opening the eye up broad so they can hand-hold the camera. But blue light is subtle. The camera has to be coaxed to capture the hues. Tighten the aperture, use a tripod, hold the exposure for as long as it takes. The colors become strong and gentle at the same time. She told me all this after her trip to Africa.”
He stopped because the waiters arrived with their meal. They murmured pleasure over the food, traded bites from one another’s plates. Like normal people. Finally Kayla said, “Finish that thought about Africa.”
“Mom’s group landed in Dar es Salaam at dawn. She spent the day walking. When the day went blue, she shot a photo that almost mirrors the one on your father’s wall. You can’t imagine the shock I felt walking in and seeing it hanging there.”
“Actually, I can. The first year or so, I regularly e-mailed Daddy pictures. For the past nine months, I scarcely wrote at all. Then I walked into Daddy’s office and there they were. And over dinner that night I learned Honor was the reason they were there.” Kayla examined him intently. “How is it possible to talk with you like this?”
“I don’t know, Kayla. But I feel the same way.”
“I never discuss myself.”
“Two pros at keeping secrets, talking easy as daylight.” He lifted his hands. “It’s a mystery. But I like it.”
“Do you?”
“So much it scares me.”
But it was Kayla who shivered.
“So ask away, Kayla.”
“You’re sure?”
“Let’s see where it takes us.”
She took a breath. “Why don’t you ever mention your father?”
“He disappeared when I was four.”
“Oh, Adam.”
“Just walked out and never came home. My mother was working freelance for a couple of local newspapers and trying to build a portfolio. When my father left, all that was ditched. She switched to department stores shooting babies.”
“And lived her dreams through the Eve Arnold prints.”
“Mom covered the walls of our apartment with shots from a woman who had started out just as low and unknown.”
“But she got the break your mother never had. I’m so sorry.”
Adam was two people. The guy who spoke, and a guy who watched. Splintered by the impossibility of talking about things he never mentioned. And more than that. Wanting to speak.
And Kayla. This striking woman of force and shadow, a lady who feared his questions, was drawn so tightly she pushed aside the plates so she could reach across the table and take hold of both his hands. Pulling them together and enveloping them with her own. Adam looked at the strong tanned fingers gripping his. As though she had been doing it for years.
Natural.
Kayla said very softly, “Are you very close to her?”
“Not for a long time. But now. Yes. Very close.”
“What happened before?”
“When I was little, Mom made me promise I wouldn’t hate my father. She made it like the most important thing in her world, if I’d do this one thing. So I tried. For her.”
The intimacy was strong as the heat radiating off the fire. “But it didn’t erase the hate, did it?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“So you rebelled.”
“Not like you’d expect. Not the drugs or the tats or hanging with the losers. I just became a professional loner. My one goal in life was to never let anybody ever hurt me like my dad hurt my mom.”
“And you,” Kayla whispered. “He hurt you too.”
Unseen hands swept the plates off the linen tablecloth. The waiter disappeared. Adam replied, “And me.”
“You became an analyst.”
“It’s the perfect role for a loner. Lock myself in a room, study and fight against the world. Take all my money and gamble it on being the first. The smartest. The best.”
“And the acting,” Kayla said, walking right alongside him. “Letting you be other people. And getting paid for it.”
“That was such a trip.” He smiled at their collection of hands. “The television company came to my university acting class, saying they were looking for a local stud. That’s exactly how they put it. A young heartbreaker who liked the lights.”
Adam stared at his reflection in the window, his features flickering and flowing in the frosted glass. The night was filled with the immense prospect of becoming a different man.
Kayla tossed and turned all night. Adam’s voice echoed through her darkened bedroom.
The drive had been bad enough. His presence had graced the bare winter landscape with an electric quality. But the dinner had almost done her in. Adam had not merely confessed. He had sent invisible magnets across the table that attached to her. Tore her through the carefully prepared barriers. Ripped open all the permanently sealed doors. Made her want to believe again.
She rolled over and turned on the bedside lamp. The light was a feeble wash that scarcely reached the room’s far corners. The ceiling above her four-poster bed was oak planks with massive crossbeams. In a happier moment, she might have imagined herself nestled within a ship of the night. Being carried off to some distant shore, where hope was not a painful barb, where the good life was hers to claim.
The painting on the wall opposite her bed caught her eye. It was just another portrait. The hotel contained hundreds. This one was of a maiden in an era of starched crinoline caps and languid smiles. Candles and torches and time had darkened the woman’s complexion and smoked away her clothes. In the lone bedside light, all Kayla could see clearly was the hand resting on her chin, a corner of her chair, and her face. Four spots of color in a broad canvas of black and gray. They held her, these glimpses of light in a sea of dark. A touch of hope that defied the surrounding night.
Kayla fumbled for the light switch and cast the bedroom back into darkness. But the woman’s smile would not be vanquished so easily. It floated in the night, just beyond the bed, smiling at her. Inviting her.
Kayla flipped the covers over her face. Adam’s smile floated before her eyes. Once again he held her hand upon the table-cloth, and once more her fingers hummed with the evening’s still-perceptible power. She hungered for a night without fear and a tomorrow lived in hope. She didn’t ask for gaiety or unending joy or a realm where all her dreams might come true. All she wanted was the simple gift of a good day. That and the touch of a man who reached for her in love.